CZM Book Club: The Barrow Will Send What it May, Chapter Three

French artillery sword. And I found a place and I bought one, and then like two weeks later, I got an email telling me that actually they were out of them and they were going to give me my money back.

Danielle Kaine series. By the time you're listening to this, you missed the kickstarter or participated in the kickstarter for this book. But don't worry. There's pre orders for the third book in the series. But that's not what we're reading. We're reading the second one. Hell yeah, chapter three. Morning came too soon for my taste. I'd scarcely been asleep before the first birds announced their desire to herald the Dawn.

Brynn was spooning me, and the idea of staying there like that was a lot more interesting than getting up to go chase down what a demon, a resurrectionist zombies. There'd be coffee, though, if I woke up. Sometimes I think I let myself get addicted to coffee, not because I liked it, not because caffeine did me any favors, but because it takes the urge of a physical addiction to provide any kind of upside to getting out of bed in the morning. It didn't bother me thinking like that.

Brynn liked coffee even more than I did, so as the dawn light came in through the window, I untangled myself from her and went off to figure out the kitchen. Vasillis was already there, chopping potatoes. He brought the blade down slowly with each cut, working silently so as to not wake the house. I found myself the coffee grinder. It would be fine. Waking up was fine. Over breakfast,

we worked out our plans. Vulture and Thursday would take the library's car, actually the old bookmobile, and head up to Glacier for the day see what they could find. Doomsday and Vasillis, we're going to go through the library see how much information they could dredge up about the Book of Barrow and Resurrection. The rest of us, Heather, Brann and myself would see what we could find out in town. Presumably we'd start by talking to Asola and Gertrude.

We'd reconvene at sunset or whenever the boys came back from Glacier. Now that I was awake, fed and caffeinated. I was actually fairly excited to get this thing figured out. Everyone likes a good puzzle. Turns out a puzzle with magic in it is twice as interesting. Brynn, Heather and I hopped on bicycles, janky old cruisers, perfect for a town as flat as Pendleton, and went off to find a sola. I had my travel pack with me, emptied in case we found anything. The few people we saw

looked friendly enough. Outside the gas station slash grocery store slash diner combo, an older fellow waved at Heather, who waved back. The tattoo on her arm was fresh. A simplified or Aboris this town actually likes its punks, I asked, we run the library. Vasillis and a Sola are from here too, well, Vasillis is from Greece, but he's been here twenty years. People don't really understand us, but they also don't really mind that they don't. If that makes sense,

it did. I'd never really stayed put long enough to get that kind of feeling in a town, but I had met a few folks who had over the years. It sounded nice, a bit lonely, though living in one place always sounded kind of lonely to me. It took us maybe ten minutes to bike out to the western edge of town. It had been a tourist town that was easy to see the gateway to the great outdoors or some shit. We must have been closer to Glacier than I realized. The last block of town held four

bed and breakfasts in a row. One of them, the first we passed, even, looked like it was probably still operational. The lawn was maintained, and a little fountain shot water up about a foot from some rocks in the front yard. The other three b and b's, though, were boarded up and overgrown, and to my eye at least all the more beautiful for it. This one's it, Heather said, parking her bike along the wrought iron fence of the last

house on the block. The building itself was small, barely more than a cottage, but its yard was expansive and it backed onto forest. If I was rich, I would live somewhere like that, or you know, since I was poor, I'd squat someplace like that. It would be nice to live somewhere where you didn't have to worry about the cops kicking down your door. But the trade off of being law abiding didn't sound worth it. We didn't lock

the bikes. We didn't even have bike locks. You two might want to go up there alone, Heather told us. I think if a solo wanted to talk to me, she would have by now, you know. So, bren and I opened the iron gate and started up the front walk. Never been on a zombies' doorstep, I said, after I rang the doorbell, I figure it's more like Lazarus's doorstep. The guy Jesus resurrected. That's the one. What's the story

with him? I asked, Hell, if I know just that Jesus brought him back from the dead, why was he so special? Go away? This last bit came from inside the house, right on the other side of the door. Brenn and I looked at each other. We uh, we come in peace, I offered, And if you want to come in peace, you should bring a piece offering, a piece offering like the things that you can get from Oh.

come in, all right, Brina greed. The door swung open. I don't know why I expected her to look like a zombie or something. I mean, i'd met Gertrude already and she looked normal enough, But I legit assumed a Sola was going to look like a zombie. A Sola didn't look like a zombie. She looked instead like well, one of us. She wore a slip dress that showed off her full figure, and her hair was tied up in a loose bun, revealing tattoos across her neck. Even

though she probably wasn't a day over twenty two. She had a claw hammer in her hand. No, wait, both hands. She had a claw hammer in each hand. It's just that only one of the two was raised. Instant friend, crush, what are you doing here? She asked, You're going to get yourself killed on a long enough timeline. Brina agreed. She had her hand hovering near the folding baton on her belt. No, I mean, if anyone sees me talking to you, I don't know what's going to happen, you

might wind up dead. That's an argument for letting us inside. Then I offered, that's an argument for y'all leaving. She countered, true, I agreed, but we didn't go. Who would kill us? Barrow? I don't know. She thought about it. No, not Barrow. What happened to you and everyone up at Glacier?

set the hammers down on a table near the door. Look, if I tell you where to look next, I am guessing you'll die. Magic is too fucked up to be safe at all for anyone hunting down mad men with access to it. That's worse. You really really should just skip town and never look back. Forget the name Barrow, forget the name Pendleton, Forget me, Forget Gertrude. Ain't gonna happen, though,

Brenn said. You want to know what's going on, you want a man named Sebastian Miller, Gertrude's husband ex husband. A Sola said, he runs the gift shop on the east edge of town with the dinosaurs, I asked, with the dinosaurs. Don't confront him, don't let him know you're investigating him, don't let him know you exist, don't tell him I talk to you. Thank you, I said. She started to close the door. Wait, I said, I still have so many questions to ask. Yeah, well, I've got

about three more seasons of Xena. I planned to watch while I pretend like I don't exist. So I'm afraid I'm too busy for questions. I'm sorry, bryn said, as the door was closing. I'm sorry about whatever happened to you. The door hesitated, thank you. The door closed. We reconvened with Heather out by the street and told her what we'd learned. Hey, that's more than I've gotten out of her, Heather said, And we used to live together, so Sebastian Miller I said, I bet he's at Dawson's right now,

the diner or grocery store or whatever. He's there most weekdays, only opens the gift shop on the weekends. Do we go to Dawson's or the gift shop? I asked, Are you kidding? Brynne asked, A SOULO is pretty clear about that. We'll go to his place now while he's not home and just break in. Heather asked, yeah, Brent said. Heather seemed to think that over for a minute. All right. We had to bike down side streets to avoid Dawson's, but it still didn't take us longer than maybe ten minutes.

Everyone we passed looked friendly, but riding through town during the day, you could tell that the town was poor destitute. Maybe about a third of the houses were abandoned and most of the rest were poorly maintained. Every road but the main one, was full of potholes. They were probably maintaining the main road for the sake of tourists if one day the tourists came back, or maybe they were maintaining the main road for their own sake, for their

own dignity. It was hard to tell. We cut through an alley, the small town kind that goes between backyards instead of brick buildings, to approach the gift shop. From the back it was easy to pick out the right place. A twenty foot tall brontosaurus with purple paint shipping off its concrete kept watch over the backyard. How will we get in, Heather asked, what are we looking for? I asked, don't know and don't know. Bryn said, well, know and we see it. To both questions. The building was a

plane cube, two stories tall and peppered with windows. I went to the closest one, popped the screen out and tried to lift the glass locked. I put the screen back in and went to the next one. You get much crime in Pendleton, Brenne asked, no, not really. Heather answered, no cops in town either. Sometimes the cam sheriff comes in to handle something, but we're pretty much on her own.

People usually lock their windows. I asked, the next window was locked too, No, Heather said, acol is something to hide. Brynn said, I mean we are trying to break in. I said, kind of justifies as paranoia. Help me up. This a potosaurus? Brynn said. It was deceptively hard to get a hold of, since the ridge of its back was just out of reach from the ground and the whole belly of the thing was round. I think it's

a brontosaurus, I said. I gave her a boost with my good arm, and she straddled the beast like she was riding it. Vulture would have wanted a photo for his Instagram. Help. I wanted a photo because Brynn looked awesome as a crosspunk Dinah writing Cowboy. But you know you're not supposed to take pictures of yourself at the scene of any given crime in progress. I thought brontos weren't real, Brynn said, I thought they were all a Potosaurus is now Nope. My youngest niece had been obsessed

with dinosaurs. Last time i'd gone to see her in Illinois, she'd schooled me good when I tried to say that brontos weren't real. They count as real dinosaurs. Again. This, by the way, unrelated is how I feel about Pluto.

it's just gone, you know. I as a teenager, I was translating the fucking a neeod into English, and I have like four words now.

by which I meant I don't think it'll hold. But in a second she had scrambled up to the little brono head and was looking at the wall of the building, about five maybe six feet away. She was gonna jump, She would have had to cross the distance and get a hold of the narrow window ledge pull herself up, then hope the window was unlocked, because there was no other logical way down. Hey, uh, I started, I'd really rather you didn't, Heather shouted. Brynn jumped. Time didn't slow

down or anything. Maybe it's sped up one second, I was yelling. In the next second, No, the same second was clinging to the window sill, which couldn't have been more than three inches deep. She pulled herself up and crouched on the sill. Brinn should have been a cat burglar. Actually, for all I knew, she was a cat burglar. She got the window open and disappeared inside. What do we do, Heather asked, unspoken. Do we try to follow her? Because I don't want to. No, I said, answering her unspoken

question instead of her spoken one. I went to the closest window. About ten seconds later, Brynn was on the other side of it and let us in. And what was inside, Robert Evans, was the most amazing deals.

or from big box stores. But a shot glass wasn't food, and this wasn't exactly a Walmart. The store looked like any roadside bullshit gift store anywhere. On the other hand, the guy who owned the place was probably a bad man. Isn't that why we'd broken into his place? That was terrible logic. That was state logic. A man wasn't guilty just because he was being investigated. I put the shotglass back.

I am pretty sure eighteen year old me would have laughed at twenty eight year old me, But eighteen year old me was kind of an asshole, so I didn't really hold myself responsible to her. I also didn't need a shot glass there wasn't much. We could imagine him hiding inside the store itself, so after the briefest of searches, we went up the stairs to his apartment. Heather took while by the front window, since she knew what the

guy looked like and the truck he drove. Brynn and I combed through the apartment, careful to set everything back into its right place, since we weren't wearing gloves. We absolutely should have been wearing gloves. We wanted to make sure he never even suspected we were there. It was frustrating, anxious work. One slip up could land us in prison. Even the natural joy of snooping was diminished by how

careful we had to be. There were two photos framed on the wall, one of Gertrude and a man who must be Sebastian, holding hands on a mountaintop with a valley and a river in the distance below. He was an unremarkable old white man, hard to distinguish from any other. The other photo was of a younger couple in the same place, probably the two of them thirty years earlier. Younger, he looked happy and handsome. The difference between the two made me sad. Happy old couples give me a sort

of hope. But by these photos the happiness had been gone for decades. There were glaciers in the background of the older photo, but they had melted by the time the newer one had been taken. More sadness. Why should the march of time be inherently melancholic? It didn't seem fair. I opened the frames carefully, no hidden notes, not even a date written on the corner to sate my curiosity. I hadn't done snooping like this more than a handful

of times. The first time, a couple of us had robbed some rich asshole's house and sold his stuff for food. I was young, reckless, and I'd never been to jail, so it was just kind of fun. The second time, the whole affair had been deadly serious. My friend's mother had been trapped in an abusive relationship, so we'd broken into the man's summer home for blackmail to hold over his head so that she could leave him in comparative safety.

That time, the stakes were too epic for it to be thrilling, but righteousness imparts a kind of high of its own. Both of those men had had entertaining secrets like embarrassingly crass porn collections or a false bottom drawer with cheesy ninja weapons hidden inside. Sebastian Miller had an easy chair, a bed, a bookshelf full of mediocre but not embarrassing books, and a fuck off big TV, a mounted deer nothing impressive, and a run of the mill

hunting rifle hung on the wall. My pack stayed empty. Their a basement, I asked, at last, after I checked every damn horror book on his shelf for a hidden compartment. Maybe through the office downstairs. Heather said, okay, office basement, and then I give up. We'll find something. Heather said, what's he like? I asked, he weird or anything. I never thought twice about him until Gertrude came back. Heather said, he drives a nineteen fifties truck. That's about the most

interesting thing about him. He used to come by the live sometimes check out thrillers for himself, romance for Gertrude, called her Gertie. He was the only one in town who called her that. I don't think she liked it. The office door behind the checkout counter of the gift shop was locked with a dead bolt. I got out my tools. I keep attention wrench and a basic rake and a hidden pouch on the waistbelt of my pack, usually to break into dumpsters for food and set to work.

Who the hell are you people, Heather asked, climbing into second story windows busting out lock picks like it's nothing. Brynn laughed in that out of character giggle of hers. We told you we're demon hunters. We should get a crew name. I said, the eulixeans. Brynn said, without hesitating, we can't name ourselves after a demon we banished. I said, no, no, think about it. Brynn said, Eulixe wasn't bad because of what he did, stopping those who wheeled power over others.

He was bad because he was a single manifestation of that ideal. We could do the same work, but as people not omnipotent, it doesn't really roll off the tongue. Heather said, fine. Brynn said fine. The tension wrench gave way in my hand, The lock turned over, and I opened the door. Just an office, well, an office straight out of the eighties or nineties or whatever. Big ugly monitor on a big ugly desk, and the carpet was

about twice as thick as could be reasonably justified. There were two other doors on the far wall, one of you a hack or two, Heather asked. I shrugged, sure, Brynn said, vulture is. We went through the drawers found nothing but business receipts and junk mail. To be honest, I don't think we'll find anything on the computer either, I said. I think this whole thing is a bust. I opened one of the two doors, a closet with cleaning supplies and office supplies. I opened the other door.

Now here was something interesting. The door led to a short hallway about ten feet long, with another door at the other end. Above the door, someone had crudely carved in Greek letters to Pota's ontana den parasai brene and I stared blankly. Uh, Heather said, squinting to Poto's ontana den tha parasi, What does that mean? I asked, No clue. I can't really speak Greek. I just learned how to sound it out a couple of years ago. Bacillis's Greek. I think I was trying to impress him. How long

have you and him? Brent started to ask, I don't know if she trailed off because she was shy to ask with me around, or she realized it wasn't the time and place five years. Heather said, it's good mostly. She opened the door. A set of plain wooden steps led down into darkness. I sometimes wish, I don't know, Heather said, I wish things were easier between us, more relaxed. He's not controlling, but somehow I just I wish I felt more free. She took a step through the doorway.

This time, my perception of time slowed down. I saw her hand move and green light rippled out across something like someone had strung an invisible window screen across the doorway. Her whole arm pierced that veil, and she screamed. She didn't have time to stop. Momentum carried her forward. Every bit of her on the far side of the doorway glowed with green fire. I grabbed for her the fingers of my hand, my goat bitten hand went right through

the doorway, and it tingled. My wrist though passed through and it hurt like fire. While most of the times I've gotten burned, fire only hurt later once the nerve ending started growing back or whatever. This time, it hurt immediately, like how fire hurts left. I got a hold of her jacket and yanked back. She fell on top of me. She stopped screaming. If she was breathing, it was too faint to hear. Dune dun dun.